


heaven knows how hard i tried

by iceberry



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24364528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iceberry/pseuds/iceberry
Summary: “I’m gonna be honest, I don’t really know how I’m supposed to pray anymore,” Sam says out loud, looking around the narrow nave of the church for something to focus on. He closes his eyes instead. “I don’t know who’s listening, and I bet that if anyone is, they’re uh, probably not happy to hear from me.”(imagined scene/character study that takes place during season 5, ep 1: sympathy for the devil)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	heaven knows how hard i tried

Sam doesn't actually bring any of the lore books with him to read when he goes to the church. _Stupid excuse_ , he chides himself as he shoves his hands in his pocket. _Could’ve just said I was going for a walk._ Dean and Bobby probably don’t believe him either way, so hell, maybe he should have just walked out the door without saying anything.

When he first left the motel, he didn’t actually plan on going to the church. He _had_ seen it earlier, when he’d been staring out of the window of the Impala to avoid having to look anywhere in Dean’s general vicinity. It’s a useful excuse to get out of the room and get Bobby’s words out of his head. So he just starts walking away from the motel and the dingy overpass next to it without any direction, ducks his head and tries not to look at the people who he passes on the street. They go about their day, mostly ignoring him. None of them have any idea what he’s responsible for. Part of him wishes they did know.

People - well, angels and demons - have been talking a lot about destiny since Dean came back from Hell. _Their_ destiny. Which really, Sam _hates_. Hates the idea - _probably more of a fact_ , says that traitorous voice in the back of his head that’s right a lot of the time - that his entire life has been grooming him for what he just did, that there was no path he could have taken to avoid it. It makes him feel out of control, and the fact that so far he’s just played right into it makes him angry in ways he doesn’t even know _how_ to vocalize.

And in comparison to breaking the final seal it’s such an impossibly small thing, but when he realizes he’s 5 more minutes of walking away from the church that he-said-he-was-going-to-but-wasn’t-really, his first reaction is to stop in the middle of the sidewalk, irrationally pissed. _I didn’t_ actually _want to go to the church_ , he thinks _at_ himself. _Turn around and walk somewhere else_. Someone bumps into him - he’s still in the middle of a city sidewalk, after all - and he sighs and walks the final block to the church. He just started the fucking _apocalypse_. If the universe, or God, or _whatever_ , is telling him to walk to a church there are bigger things to fight right now.

Once he gets there, he hesitates on the sidewalk outside of the building before going in. The church is a narrow stone building, the small tower dwarfed by the apartments on each side of it. When he looks up and follows the lines of the building towards the sky, it feels like the church is being swallowed by the city around it; the grey stone against the grey sky doesn’t help the impression that it’s disappearing. 

“Can I help you?” Sam blinks and pulls his attention away from the steeple and to the middle-aged man who’s just walked up behind him. A white collar in the neck of a black shirt is visible under his coat, but there’s no suspicion or judgement in his voice.

“I was just - I was thinking about going in,” Sam says. “Maybe.” 

The priest gives him a bright smile. “Well, you missed mass by a few hours, but you’re of course welcome to come inside.”

“Thank you,” Sam replies, hesitant; he waits a few beats before he follows the priest up the stairs. He wants to give himself a chance to change his mind and turn around.

 _Your body temperature was 150. Your heart rate was 200. Your eyes were black_. What he’d muttered to Dean back at Chuck’s house was true - he didn’t know. If it had changed his vision at all, he’d been too focused on Lilith to notice, if the heat had taken a toll on his body or heart, everything had happened too fast afterwards to notice. (What _really_ makes his stomach sink is knowing that even if he had felt his eyes change, or knew it was going to happen, he would have gone through with it anyways.)

Walking up the steps behind the priest, he’s half-convinced he’ll be flung back the second his foot lands on hallowed ground. Whatever put them on the plane had cleaned him up, sure, but there’s no way it undid everything he did to himself, and with the amount of blood he had to drink, maybe everyone who told him to stop was right. Maybe he is different in a way that can’t be fixed now.

Sam takes a deep breath and braces himself for the feeling of his back hitting concrete, or a burning in his veins as the very _space_ rejects him, and steps forward -

\- and nothing happens. One foot crosses the threshold into the church, and then another, and he only stops his forward motion because the priest in front of him slows to dip his fingers into the font of holy water in the entryway and makes the sign of the cross. Sam barely realizes he’s still holding his breath as he follows the motion and the tips of his own touch the surface of the water. And it... just feels like lukewarm water. He stares at his hand, and dips his fingers further in until he feels the bottom of the font. He doesn’t know exactly what he expected, but there’s still something surprising when there’s no burning, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, _just water._

He finally manages to pull his wide-eyed look away from his hand when the other man clears his throat. “Well, I only came by to pick something up, but if you would like to give confession and don’t think it will take long-”

“No,” he replies, head snapping up and quickly pulling his hand back out of the water, shaking off the excess. He maybe replies a little too quickly, based on the surprised expression that comes across the priest’s face. “No, really I’m - I’m fine,” he adds, trying to get himself back together fast enough to get the attention off of himself. “I’d rather not. But thank you.”

The man looks at him for a second, then nods. “A lot of people come through this church,” he starts. “I’ve gotten pretty good at guessing when someone’s got something on their chest. So even if you just want someone to listen, no sacraments involved.”

“I made a mistake,” Sam says, and he continues before he can stop himself. “I let a lot of people down, and I don’t know what all the consequences of what it will be. Yet. But I know they’ll be bad, and I know there’s _nothing_ I can do to make it right.” 

The priest raises an eyebrow. “Nothing?”

“It’s… yeah. Nothing.” He already regrets saying what he did, which just came out of a pure need for _someone_ besides Dean and Bobby to know he’s done wrong, but now he. Where would he even begin? ‘Well, when I was an infant, a demon gave me its blood and I’ve been fighting a losing war against the evil inside me for 26 years. Also, millions, maybe billions of people are about to die because of me.’ He _almost_ laughs bitterly at that, but keeps it to himself and looks down towards the front of the Church, away from the concerned eyes of the priest. _I don’t deserve your concern_ , he thinks. “You know what, I think I’d just like to sit alone for a bit.”

“Of course. Maybe prayer will ease things a bit,” the priest says, and Sam replies with a thin, sad smile. _Doubtful_ , he thinks. But at the same time, _What else am I here for?_

True to his word, Sam hears the priest leave out the front door a few minutes after he’s settled in a pew somewhere in the middle of the church. Realistically, he knows that someone else has to be in the building - a janitor in the church hall downstairs, a receptionist in one of the offices in the front - but he can fool himself into thinking he’s alone enough to talk out loud now that the priest has gone. Every time he’s tried to start in his head, the words have slipped away before he can think anything cohesive, so when the door shuts, he takes a deep breath.

“I’m gonna be honest, I don’t really know how I’m supposed to pray anymore,” Sam slowly says out loud, looking around the narrow nave for something to focus on. There’s stained glass, but he finds he can’t bring himself to focus on the images of angels (not after seeing what they’re really like), and the rest of the space is about as utilitarian as churches get. No ornate altars, no fancy paintings. He closes his eyes instead. “I don’t know who’s listening, and I bet that if anyone is, they’re uh - probably not happy to hear from me.”

Most of the time Sam prays, he does so once he’s already laying down in bed, running through the words in his head or mouthing them into his pillow so his brother doesn’t hear him. When he does it during the day or before he lays down, he’ll fold his hands together, so he tries that, but sitting here alone, it doesn’t feel reverent, it feels pathetic. He pulls his hands apart and rests them on the pew in front of him, then lays his palms on his legs, pushes hair out of his face out of habit. None of it feels right, so he just folds them again.

“I know what I did is unforgivable, I know, I just - I don’t know how to stop trying to make it right,” he admits. “I know Dean just wants me to shut up about it, but I can’t let things go, especially when they’re my fault.” _And it’s_ usually _my fault,_ he adds to himself. “I just don’t know how to - I mean Lilith is dead because I couldn’t let her go, and they used that against me.” 

“But I know I can’t fix this one, so I just - I don’t know,” he admits, voice straining a little. He refuses to cry about this in an empty church, but his voice breaks a little, and he opens his eyes and looks upward. Do the angels hear prayers? ( _Does Cas?_ ) “I don’t even know why I’m here. It’s not like I can fix what’s inside me. And every time I’ve tried to make up for it, things have just gotten worse. I never stopped praying completely, even after I found out about the blood, but...”

“Maybe this is part of my punishment, you know? That I don’t really have a choice but to believe in a lot of this,” he says, followed by a sad huff-laugh and a glance down at his folded hands. “I mean, who knows about God. If you _are_ hearing this, sorry for doubting, I guess. But I prayed to angels, too. I don’t know what you guys are doing, but I know you’re out there. I know most of you want me dead.” The end of that sentence hangs in the air for a moment, and he lets _dead_ echo around the church, more to force himself to think about it and feel the gravity of his mistakes than to make sure the angels hear it.

“I’m not going to ask for anything or pray for anyone,” he says, suddenly uncomfortable with how open the church is, how exposed he feels. “I know I don’t deserve that. But um, if God - or whoever, if anyone who hears this had anything to do with it, I’m… I’m thankful I’m still human. Or as close to human as possible for me.” He does let a little bitterness slip into his voice on that, but he means it. Considering everything he’s done to draw away from it, he probably doesn’t deserve to hold onto his humanity. But here he is, sitting on hallowed ground, eyes green and fingers unburnt from holy water. “I don’t actually know if anyone had anything to do with it, maybe I always would have stayed human. Or if it’s dumb luck. But if you did, uh, thanks.”

Sam doesn’t feel absolved when he pushes the door open and he walks back towards the motel. He still feels like shit, is still acutely aware of how badly he fucked up and how little forgiveness he deserves. He still has no idea how they’re going to fix this, if it’s even _possible._ But he doesn’t feel worse. And he feels human, or close to it. And that’s a start. 

**Author's Note:**

> if you want to know how i’m handling 2020, please go look at the date of the last spn fic i posted on this account, know that i was in 8th grade when i wrote it, and look at the date this one was posted. bizarrely enough that fic is set in the Exact same episode as this one, like minutes apart? extremely weird, extremely unintentional, i just spend most of my time watching this show wondering how sams feeling besides bad. i would like to hope this one is better written but who can say? title from second child, restless child by the oh hellos
> 
> you can find me on twitter @tube_ebooks, where i’ve mostly been tweeting my way through my spn rewatch(es) and trying to decide if i have the mental fortitude to watch past season 5 since i stopped watching in like 2013


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